I Saw.

This is part of my journal entry that I wrote last night, my first journal entry since I've been back.
I promise that I will blog more in detail about Haiti, but for now with everything on my mind and on my heart, and everything I'm thinking and feeling, this is the best I can give you:

I need to clear my head.
Haiti is still sinking in.

What do you do after you see an orphan's tears?
What do you do after you hold a child, skinny, naked, dirty, with a bloated belly?
What do you do after you hug a worker, knowing that place had a little boy die a week before because they couldn't get him to a hospital?
What do you do after you clean out desks at an orphanage and find piles of rice that the children apparently felt they had to hide there?
And what do you do after you say goodbye?

Haiti broke my heart. Haiti is still breaking my heat.
People ask how my trip was.
What do I say, "it was great"?
It was heartbreaking. It was shocking. It was eye-opening. Life-changing.

I remember crying in that scary Haitian airport, thinking how easy it would be to go home, finish school, go to college, get a normal, comfortable American job, and never go back there... or anywhere else for that matter.
But I'll never be satisfied with easy.
Jesus wasn't.

"Now that I have seen, I am responsible."

Moving to Africa... is going to be so hard.
I never realized it until I stood there crying and shaking in the airport.
Missions... is hard.
This call God has on my life is Him, not me.
I can't do it.
I could barely live in Haiti for 8 days.

God is doing something even bigger than I realized.

Physically, all I want is to be in America.
America...
where the roads are smooth,
where it doesn't get so hot,
where the air is clear and dust doesn't fill your lungs with every breath,
where no bugs crawl on me while I sleep.

But when I think of Tito, Evelin, Marcline, Rodria, Esther, and all those other beautiful children...
my spirit and my soul and everything in me longs to be with them,
and I know this isn't where I belong.

"I saw what I saw, and I can't forget it."

I have a restlessness for these kids.
I want to kiss their cheeks
and wipe their tears
and hold their hands
and feed them
and clothe them
and keep them safe
and love them
and teach them about Jesus. Their Shepherd.

America feels good, to my flesh.
But my spirit and heart can only think of them,
and all I want is to love on them for the rest of my life.

So now, all I can do is trust God, ask Him for peace and direction,
and ask what to do with this responsibility
because I saw.